WINDSTORM
by Happyphantom
Summary: *Chapter 5 up!*A young girl runs like the wind...and what about Trunks? Will he help her or destroy her? Still a minute of patience!
1. The runner

WINDSTORM

Hi all, this is my first DBZ fanfiction that goes on the Net, so please be understanding!  
English isn't even my mother language, so forgive any mistakes or oddities you might find and please signal them at my e-mail address so I can fix them!  
Thank you!

CHAPTER ONE:THE RUNNER

"So here we are" she thought.  
Looking down at the yellow dome below her, she felt nothing of the things she expected to feel.

Excitement, joy, relief...even anguish or the will to cry...no one of these feelings was in her now.  
Just a great weariness and , suddenly, an unexpected desire to sleep in a warm bed.

How long hadn't she done that?  
As far as she could remember, it was ages. She suddenly saw herself a little child, waiting for her mother to come wake her up before going to work, while she was waiting under soft blankets, still drowsy and yet looking forward to begin the new day.

All of that was gone. She would be the mother now, and she would have a little girl to wait for her in the mornings.

"Let's go" she said, and came down slowly towards the dome, carefully watching for anyone that could be around.

She was a short girl, with nervy legs and bony shoulders, small pale hands and yellow eyes that burned like coals under the dark red-purple bangs that fell on her forehead, partially hiding her face. Those eyes had seen too much; those almond-shaped eyes were on the point of seeing even more, if anything went wrong. But she had all the skills to make it right, and she had to get it made.

thirty minutes before

"How beautiful the weather is tonight. If I don't find too much traffic, I could be home in less than one hour."

Such were the thoughts of Bulma Briefs in that crispy, transparent early spring night. She was driving home from a work trip, one of the many she used to undertake in those days, for now that those monsters no longer went rampaging over the Earth and reconstruction had begun her multi-sided skills of scientist, computer programmer, engineer and sometimes even self-trained physician were greatly needed.

Those monsters had been the Jinzouningen. Cyborgs, in a simpler word.  
Forever gone as they were now, the thought of them alone was still enough to scar the life out of men and women in villages and towns all over the Earth. Not that there were particularly many left now, for the Artificial Humans' fury didn't spar anything or anyone that existed, and most of the human beings had been killed through thirteen years of terror and grief.  
Juunanagou and his sister Juuhachigou simply got rid of anything that stood in their way.

"Oh, I don't have to think about such things. We are reconstructing now, all I have to care about is being serene and working hard. Everything will be alright. I can' wait to be home again and see my son" she said to herself, and she ran a hand through her hair, thoughtfully.

"Now that even Cell has gone, there really is nothing left to fear. There is no jinzouningen left on earth...not even just one!"   
She was cheering herself like that, when she turned her head slightly leftwards to catch sight of something that was moving very fast in her rear-view mirror. It was too small to be dismissed as an overtaking car, and too fast not to be a machine...Bulma choked on her own breath. It had a human shape.

The "j" word obviously was the first to occur to her, with all its load of fear and disbelief. The second word that came to her mind was "girl". That human shape was that of a girl. She could have been fifteen for all that Bulma could tell; just, it was the fastest fifteen-year-old girl she had ever seen.  
Her dark, short hair was ruffled by the wind it rode over, and the yellow colour of her eyes was clearly visible in the distance; her legs almost blurring below her, her feline moves, the effortlessness of her pace, all this made for some kind of weird grace.

And there she was, intruding between the cars , picking up speed step after step, fast and furious, a force of nature, or maybe just a force of technology. Whatever she was, "human" was not the right word.

This is what Bulma was thinking when the girl - or the whatever - decided to run past her car and , for Kami knows what reason, suddenly cut in front of her.

It was too late for the woman to stop the irrational thought that she could hurt the girl if she ran over her. She should have known, for having experienced that so many times in her life - with her best friend who had died of a heart disease a long time ago, with the mate whom had given her a son, with her son himself - that a creature capable of such a performance couldn't get hurt just by a car, going at top speed as she was or not.

And this is what made her turn abruptly to the side of the road,hit the guardrail, lose contolr of the car, and shut her eyes tight before everything collapsed around her.

Bulma awoke to the feeling that something was rubbing a spot just under her collarbones, and it hurt.  
That good. If it hurt, she was alive.  
So she didn't think it was some kind of supernatural being that she was being taken care by when she opened her eyes and realized that she was being held.  
All she saw was a yellow spot, that slowly split into two, enlarging then to reveal a pale, sweetly smiling face.  
It was the hyper girl.  
Bulma was overtaken by fear all at once; if the girl was what she thought she was, that smile was the cruel prelude to a hand suddenly shooting to her throat or to her heart to tear the life out of her.  
She tried to free herself from the girl's embrace, to wake, to run, but her enjured body hurt everywhere, and all she could do was roll weakly in her arms, wanting to holler.

But instead of her own voice she heard another one : a treble, crisp voice, almost resembling the one of a child, but sharp and feminine nontheless.

"Guess who" she just said. "Seems I decided to save life to the right person. Or maybe to the wrong one, what can I know? Let's go to some place where they can take care of you better than I."

And, saying so, she took flight and headed for the nearest hospital.  
Then she was gone.

Back home, at Capsule Corporation, Trunks was worried for his mother. She never left home without telling him where she was headed, and never forgot to call if for any reason she had to be late. In this case her silence was all the more troubling, because the young boy knew that she had gone quite far. A small village in the south-west had required her presence and , generous as she was, Bulma would never refuse.  
Trunks wondered where in the world she could have got into hot water.

Speaking about the world, it was much safer now that the Jinzouningen had been defeated.  
Almost a month had gone by since even the last and most dangerous of Gero's creations, which went under the name of Cell, had been killed and destroyed by Trunks himself.  
Too short a time to forget thirteen years in the company of Juunanagou an Juuhachigou...too short to forget all the dead people, all the havoc, all the terror they caused.  
Too short to forget of all his dead friends.

Trunks often wondered if it was the right choice to go back to the past and save the life of Gohan's father.  
Well, actually he knew it was right: by doing that, he had created an alternative, happier timeline, where the Earth hadn't been destroyed, where the warriors that kept watch to mantain the peace were still alive, and where Gohan, the best friend he'd ever had, had survived, and now had the chance to live out a better life than that of his future counterpart. A life without the nightmare of the cyborgs.

He missed Gohan. Meeting him again in the past, even though he was younger than the Gohan he knew, had opened again an old wound in his heart he believed to be sealed forever.  
He missed Gokou, Gohan's father, whom had been able to infect him with his cheerfulness and optimism even in the few weeks they'd been together.  
And most of all he missed his own father, Vegeta, the proud and defying prince of the Saiyajin, whom he'd never met in his timeline. He had died when Trunks hadn't even learnt to speak ,by the hands of the Jinzouningen.

Some days, when he was alone and thinking, all of these memories hurt him like being stabbed in the chest with a piece of splintered glass. What he had lived through sometimes was simply too much to stand.  
For months after the defeating of the Cyborgs, before the coming of Cell, he used to wonder around in the country, where big craters still stood to signal a place where the Jinzouningen had had a better time in battle than usual , or just had felt like digging a hole in the ground.  
He was completely alone in these journeys of his. He tolerated the presence of no one: whenever a shape that could have been human appeared in the distance, he turned his way to go somewhere else.  
He had too much to think about to draw his attention to conversation.  
Bulma often was troubled by this solitary attitude of his: if it kept on going like this, he would develop exactly the same character as his father.  
But it is to be said that she didn't dislike this perspective as much as she wanted to make believe.

"Hai, moshi moshi" he said picking up ther receiver when the telephone rang.

"Your mother is at the hospital" a young female voice whispered in his ear. "Go now!"

"Wait! Who are you? How do you know that? Whare are you calling from? What happened?"

Too late. The call had already been closed, leaving Trunks completely upset. His mother! His mother had had an accident!His mother was at the hospital, almost certainly with some kind of problem, probably injured, maybe dying...how could that girl tell him nothing about what had happened to her? How could she cut the call like that?  
He had to run! He had to go! To the hospital, right now!

Trunks had never approved his mother running around here and there to bring help wherever she could, and entering the small Eastern City Hospital he once more figured out the reson that made him think like that.  
Just the perspective of seeing his mother in such a place was horrible.

The hospital was little more than a hutment, at least since the cyborgs had last been there.  
Cracks were running all over the bleak, peeled off walls. Where the floor had once been, now there was something hardry recognizable as the remainings of tiles, and most of the windows no longer had their glass. The entire building gave the visitor a feeling like it was still standing on itself for a miracle.

"Okaasan"Trunks murmured, lifting gently his mother's hand.

"Trunks...Trunks...I thought I'd die..."

"What happened? Who did this to you?"

"There was a girl...then she saved my life...and she run, she run..."

Bulma's words were little more than delirious now; the shock of the accident had still serious consequences on her.  
Trunks looked down at his mother in concern, and she looked back at him; thanks Kami her injures were not as serious as it had seemed in a first moment, and her life wasn't in danger.  
Trunks sat down at his mother's side.  
Whoever had done this to her, he had to pay. 


	2. Spring in the Eastern City

WINDSTORMchapter2  
  
  
Bulma was slowly recovering .  
The accident had shaken her more than she expected . Having seen everything in life as she had, she thought there was nothing left that could shock her. Well, she knew another thing now...never say never.  
  
And never refuse help when you are injured, especially when it comes from a supernaturally strong son.Trunks' skills were more than heaven sent in those days. He could help her in almost every work that was physically demanding.  
  
And for everything that required intellectual skills there was another assistant, newly come and welcome by Bulma with the deepest gratefulness: Amrita.  
Bulma thought she should thank Kami directly (if there still had been one) when the young woman appeared one day at Capsule Corporation, asking to become her apprentice.  
  
"Well" the older woman answered to the younger one "let me see what you can do. I can pass down to you a lot of things, my gal, but not everyone would be able to understand just a part of them. Let's do like this: I can keep you here as my apprentice for a month. You will try to do what I ask you and I will try to make you understand. But if I judge you not suitable for this work when that time is up you will have to give up . Do you think you can do it?"  
  
The girl reflected for a while before answering.  
  
"Yes, Bulma-sama."  
  
Trunks smirked, unseen. Amrita was pretty enough not to look too intelligent at first sight. But after all,in her youth, so was his mother.  
"I wonder how long she is going to last" he thoght to himself. Bulma would sure make her work very hard.  
  
Trunks was a clever boy - very clever, indeed. Probably much more than average, as Bulma well knew : how could it be otherwise? He was her son!  
But to inherit all of Bulma's knowledge that was not enough.  
Bulma wasn't just clever: she was a genius.  
And one with many faces, too: to learn all that she could teach, another genius   
was needed.  
And Amrita was that genius.   
She had the most amazing intelligence that Bulma had ever seen, apart from herself, obviously!  
Teach her anything, she would promptly learn, ask her anything, and she would gather informations from any available source, often via mysterious channels which she guarded jealously like secrets.  
  
It was a pleasure to see her go around the lab, busy as usual, fetching this or that thing for Bulma, or work on the computer,whose secrets she seemed to understand like an open book. Tecnology was something like a game that she loved to play. But most of all she loved bionics and cybernetics,and had spent weeks   
studying the project for Jinzouningen Juunanagou which Trunks had brought back from the past. "It's so fascinating" she used to say. "But unluckily I'm not very skilled at it."  
  
Bulma would listen, and every now and then she would draw long sighs. "Unluckily" was not the adverb she would use in this case, not after all the panic the Jinzouningen had caused. But maybe Amrita was not so wrong; artificial humans could possibly come into usefulness some day. Especially now that reconstruction was setting off well, but there never were arms enough...it would be easy to build an android and give it the right programming so that it would help in the most fatiguing works. A pacific creature, made to serve human beings instead than to kill them. A completely artificial being with no will of its own, prompt and skilled when required but otherwise completely harmless. A very appealing fantasy...  
  
  
"What's that?" asked a rather curious Trunks.  
  
Amrita was working at Capsule Corporation, like she did every day.  
But today she was not in the lab,which had become her reign soon after her arrival, but in a room at the second floor, sitting by the balcony door with a large sheet of paper unfolded in her lap.   
  
"What are you doing here today? I thought you never came out of the lab. You've been here for almost six weeks now, and I never saw you anywhere else, whatever long was the period you spent in here."  
  
"Well" started answering Amrita. "Seems that your mother is gaining a little trust in me now, and so she gave me the permission to use this room upstairs instead of always staying in the lab.The lab is in the subterranean floor,you know, and it is so gloomy. It made me sad to spend too much time there. I can't waste these gorgeous sunny days."  
  
Oh, that was a wonderful reason. Trunks gave her right; it was the middle of May now, their first spring without the Jinzouningen, and never had the days seemed so beautiful .  
It was like a rebirth, both of living beings and things.  
New buildings were substituting ruins little by little, while the scattered debris were being taken away to be turned into new building materials.  
On the once arid, devastated, blood-soaked land grass and vegetables had started growing again, the explosion craters in the ground slowly levelling like wounds closing on a tortured body.  
Even people seemed to renew : those who used to stay hidden for fear of being killed now came out in the free air, eyes half-closing in the sun like some strange kind of creature that has been living too long in the underground.  
  
  
The sunlight flooded the balcony and the large room, giving everything a warm orange golden tone like the walls were on fire. But if one went out, the sky was infinite, its colour so blue that one could barely stand to watch it.  
  
Against that background even Amrita's hair was somehow diminished in its beauty.  
It was light blue, just a little more tendent to lavender than the sky, 'straight as spaghetti' -as Bulma used to call it- and so flowing that she always had to keep it bound in complicate hairdos, that gave her a certain air of nobility.  
  
As a matter of fact Amrita was not noble at all, being as she was the product of a broken home,like she had once admitted with Bulma. Broken not because of anything like divorce, but, as so often happened, because of one of her parents -her father in this case- being killed by the jinzouningen. But both Bulma and Trunks knew she didn't like talking about it, and carefully avoided the subject whenever the occasion presented.  
  
Amrita seemed to be in a good mood that day. She turned towards Trunks showing him the papers she held. They were covered in numbers and drawings, diagrams and schemes, looking to him like the writing of a dead language that he,the frustrated archaeologist, could not decode.  
  
"Are you talking about this? Oh, it's nothing special. It's just the project for a neural net" she explained,like it was the most natural thing in the world.  
  
"A neural...?" he replied, puzzled. "Wait! I know what it is. It is a net made of circuits arranged so to imitate the way human brain neurons works, isn't it? And can you really turn it into a real thing? I read they're incredibly complicated to construct, not to talk about the physical space they occupy...and that just to simulate the brain of a simple living being..."  
  
"I don't know" Amrita said thoughtfully. "I wouldn't dare to say that I want to emulate a human brain. Plus, we still don't have enough knowledges about the way a system like that can work. We still don't know wheter it works at all, actually. No- I'll settle for the brain of some small domestic mammal, like a dog or a cat." She paused, then drew in a long breath. "But for the moment, that's just a dream. Even if I could really build such a thing, I couldn't give it an appropriate body now. I've been studying the projects for Jinzouningen Juunanagou lately, but those ones are for a human body, and moreover they require an organic basis to support their main structures. If only your mother would help me...but for some unknown reason, she refuses. Just to build an artificial cat..."  
  
"Don't blame her. You talk like you've been living on another planet for the last twenty years. Everyone has gone through so much because of artificial beings that I think they don't want to see another for the rest of their lives, even if it is a cat."  
  
"I understand. But it's like refusing electric energy from a thermonuclear installment just because there has been the atomic bomb.What I mean is, there are some risks, but you still want electricity, don't you?"  
  
"And what would be the advantages that justify your research? Electricity is an extremely useful thing, but it doesn't seem like for your robot cat it will be the same."  
  
"There are a lot of things that you can do...but listen, let's change subject matter now. Don't you still know anything about that girl that almost killed your mother? Haven't you found her?"  
  
"No.That troubles me a lot. I've been searching everywhere around the zone where the accident happened, but there was absolutely no trace of her. Obviously if she can go as fast as my mother reported she could as well have taken the world tour in the meanwhile.And I cannot scan the whole Earth for her."  
  
"You're worried about your mother, aren't you?"  
  
"Actually not that much. We have to remember that in the end that sort of out-of-place Powerpuff Girl dragged her out of the car and saved her life by taking her to the hospital. You should have seen the car chassis after she did that. The car was all shrivelled up like a dead snail and the doors wouldn't open, so it needed to be flame-cut to take even a pin out of it. She ripped it up in two with her bare hands I say. I swear I saw hand marks on the plate - they had remained impressed on it like it was butter."  
"So if she wanted to kill my mother, she would have done it by now, I suppose.  
No, that's not the main problem, the point is that we cannot let a creature so strong simply roam wherever she pleases and do whatever she wants. She could be dangerous, and how can we know she's not until we track her down? And where does she come from? Why didn't we ever hear about her? Why didn't she ever fight against Juunanagou and his sister?"  
  
"She could have done it, just that we don't know. If we don't know anything about her so far, how can we know if she didn't do that too?"  
  
"That's not a bad argument. But you see, I suppose something like that should have made the scene wherever it happened to occurr. Things like that don't go unnoticed."  
  
Amrita stayed silent, made a move like she wanted to answer, then apparently gave up.She crossed her arms and bended her head, so that her chin rested on her collarbones now. She seemed immersed in deep thoughts.  
  
"Listen" she said , starting all of a sudden. "Now I'll go down in the lab. Tell your mother I'm there if she comes looking for me."  
And, saying so, she got up from her chair and hurried downstairs straight away.  
  
Trunks watched her go.  
He liked her, much the way he could like an older sister, because she was twenty-eight years old - which is, when Trunks was born she was already seven.  
She was lucky, the boy thought,she knew what it meant to live in a world devoid of the jinzouningen, at least for the first years of her life. Him, he didn't have any memory at all of what the world was like before they came, but he figured out it had to be much better than it was now, for at least it wasn't full of gloomy ruins everywhere.  
He knew something from his trips in the past, but that would never be the same.  
Amrita, she had really lived there.  
She was somehow crazy and wise at the same time. And she wore strange flowing clothes that made her look even more like a princess.  
He figured out that she would be the right heir for his mother's knowledges.  
  
That was a pity , because he often spent his days fantasising about bringing home a wife that would be his beloved mate and his mother's worhty daughter-in law at the same time.  
That's what it was, a fantasy, he perfectly knew. Not only had human beings become a rather rare race on earth, but also he knew his character wouldn't allow him to mate easily.  
He was tough, stubborn, a lover of solitude who didn't always enjoy human company, even that of his mother, and he thought he was bitter, for having lived in a world falling apart, for having lost his teacher and his best friend, for having seen people die every day.  
Plus he didn't think that he could be a good father.His convinction was that there are things that you have to learn directly from seeing them happen. 


	3. She was a secret

WINDSTORMchapter3  
  
"That's ok. Now help me out with this thing. Right. Trunks...will you please fetch me that cable? No, the one that's on the table in the corner. Yes, that yellow one...owww, my poor eyes. That's it. Now we should be able to...No, no, no! What are you doing? If you set it this way, you will break the...Bulma-sama, are you alright? Oh, good..."  
  
Bulma took off her magnifying glasses. She was exhausted.  
  
"Bulma-sama, you shouldn't be working so hard. You still aren't completely healed." Amrita told her.  
  
"Oh, Amrita, stop babbling. You speak like you were the one responsible for my accident. I've been through much worse things than this, and I survived all the times. If i lived through the age of the cyborgs, then so I can do now...Ouch!"  
  
"Amrita is right, mom. Now you be good and sit down, and we're going on with the work. C'mon"  
Trunks added, taking his mother's shoulders and gently guiding her to a chair.  
"If you survive the jinzouningen and then die with excessive work then I'll say you've been very silly, mom."  
  
"Shut up! It's me who decides what to do with myself, and if I say I can go on, then you don't have to worry about me! I'll bet I can still go on the whole after...ouch! Oh, I surrender. Yes, maybe you're right. But there are so many people in need, and so much work to be done... don't forget that Capsule Corporation is the only firm left on Earth that produces certain kinds of items. Maybe I should hire some workmen, but I wonder who would pay them then. If we had just one senzu, then I would heal straight away, and maybe I could work much harder. Oh, someone is ringing at the door. Let me go open" answered Bulma.   
Despite the protests of Amrita and her son, who were on the point of arguing for who of the two would go instead of her, Bulma hurried upstairs .  
She enjoyed walking now that she could do it without crutches.  
  
When she reappeared she was followed by a woman with long, dark-chestnut hair tied in two ponytails, delicious baby-blue eyes and sports clothes: Trunks didn't know her, but anyone who lived in the alternative timeline he had created would have recognized her as Videl, the daughter of Mr.Satan.   
  
"Guess who" Bulma said happily. "Videl! She came here to see how I was."  
  
"Hi everybody" Videl greeted happily, showing her most cheering smile.  
  
Everyone smiled back at her: Videl was a lovely girl, also in this timeline. And a lucky one too, for her father was still alive, even though he had retired from fighting years ago for fear of being prompted to challenge the cyborgs.  
Despite this, there was a person that she missed more than everything, one that she would give anything to get back from death...but that was impossible, she knew. What she had to do now was to carry on and to show the world that she could be tougher than life, when life was tough, and happier than anybody else when there was a reason to be happy.  
  
"And I see you're working again on a new project. Always working so hard, aren't you, Bulma-sama? I think you should take more rest, I don't know, maybe leave for an holiday.Trunks, tell her too, 'cause she won't listen to me. She deserves it, ne?"  
  
Bulma blushed and frowned, but said nothing.  
  
"And Amrita! How are you?" The two girls hugged one another, laughing.  
  
"I'm ok!" said Amrita. "And guess what! I've finished it!" Enthusiastic like a child, she grabbed Videl's wrist and dragged her to a corner, where a small basket covered with a blanket was.  
"Actually, it shouldn't need the blanket, but I put it there to make everything more real. It's sleeping now, but we will wake it up. Hey, mister, get up!"  
  
"Really?Will you show it to me?Oh...WOW!"   
  
Videl uttered little screams in delight. Something very small was peering from under the blanket, something with curious, mischievous eyes and trembling whiskers...a kitty! But it was a kitty much Amrita style, although at first sight nobody would have told it was completely artificial.  
He behaved exactly the same way of a timid, clumsy kitty that's learning to walk.  
  
"Oh, Amrita, it's delicious! And look the way it moves! It cannot even stand on its legs, it's's so   
tender! And it's meowing!"  
  
"Yes, I thought that would be nice to add. You have to communicate with the world if you want to learn. Stroke it if you want, that will do it good."  
  
"Oh, can I?Is it true what Bulma says? That it has to learn everything, little by little?"  
  
"Yes" Bulma answered. "Artificial beings endowed with a neural net cannot possibly be born with programmed knowledges like old-style androids used to do. You can set some instinctual behaviour  
in reacting to determinate events or enviromental conditions, like it is for living beings, but that's all. All the rest it will have to learn by itself little by little, like real puppies and children do. Including how to walk, as you can see. The result should be an intelligence mostly similar to the natural one, which means that it will be able to gain new knowledges and abilities...and if we are lucky, it could even start to think. Or to do something resembling thought, anyway. Connect events spontaneously and so on.I didn't agree with Amrita when she first decided to try out this experiment, but I have to admitt that the results are um, well...interesting."  
  
"Which implies that...we will have to educate it, I suppose!"  
  
"Yes...like it was a child!We can try to teach it everything...who knows, one day our little experiment might even learn to read!" Everybody laughed; the thought of the kitty on a news paper seemed most unlikely and decidedly ridiculous.  
  
Bulma smiled. She was proud of her pupil now, even though she found wise not to admitt that in front of her, so she should feel challenged to achieve even more spectacular results. With her beautiful mind, who knew where Amrita could get some day.  
  
"How did you solve the body problem?" asked Trunks.  
  
"Ah, the body problem, yes. Nano-machines. Incredibly small mechanisms and circuits that can reproduce themselves and repair on their own. They can form bodies that work similarly to those of living organisms in evrerything, not to talk about all the other things you can do with them!They're so small that they can repair a damaged body part from the inside. That helped me also with the neural net problem, because I was afraid that it would occupy too much space if we made it with traditional circuits. This way I could put in it many more connections than I hoped to, so maybe my creature won't be too stupid... I have to thank your mother for finding out, I would never have solved the problem without her."  
  
"And...what's the name you gave this little jewel?"  
  
"Um, I don't know. For the moment I just go by calling it RoboKoNeko, like it was called in the projects. You know, I thought it was premature to give it a name when it still hasn't developed any personality of its own at all. We could call it Tiger and find ourselves with an incredibly fearful animal that can't hunt a fly, or Romeo, and see it behave like a female cat and adopt kitties...everything could happen!"  
  
"That seems fun" commented Bulma.   
  
And so it was that RoboKoNeko kept the name it would bear for the rest of its life.  
  
~ * ~  
  
Videl was nervous. She was always nervous when she was about to do something she had never tried before.  
  
"That's ok, relax. It's all about concentration, haven't I told you? It's not the same as being tense:"  
  
"I don't know, Trunks. I feel like even if I should be able to lift off the ground just a few inches, I'd hurt myself very bad when I fall down."  
  
Videl chewed her lower lip with a worried look on her face. This was just the beginning of her first lesson, and she already regretted having ever asked to Trunks to teach her how to fly. She was sure it would end up in utter disaster.  
  
"Never mind, Videl. ChiChi's told me you are an exceptionally skilled fighter, even to be a girl. Your father's given you good lessons, hasn't he?"  
Mr. Satan was the well-known and beloved former wrestling world champion, but, Trunks thought smiling to himself, would he ever have the courage to challenge Cell? Oh, well, now that it came into his mind he had...Hum, probably the Mr.Satan of this timeline was somehow wiser, judging by the way he had carefully avoided confronting with the cyborgs.  
  
"First, what do you mean, 'to be a girl'? Can't girls fight? And second, I'll tell you a secret, my father is not as good at fighting as everybody thinks out there. He taught me the basis of fighting, but it was someone else who made me really improve. It was him who first promised he'd teach me how to fly, many years ago." All of a sudden her expression turned dark. "But he never could."  
  
"Why? Did he go away?" Trunks immediately regretted being so naive. Wrong question.  
  
"He's dead. Killed by the cyborgs." Videl answered sadly, giving confirmation to Trunks' suspect.  
  
Trunks bit his toungue hard. "My big bad mouth" he thought.  
"Videl, I'm...I'm sorry. Forgive me, I'm an idiot."  
  
"Nevermind. You couldn't know that."  
  
"I should have. Everybody's lost someone. I have too."  
  
"Nevermind I said. That was a long time ago."  
  
"So it was for me, but it still hurts."  
  
"Nevermind."  
  
Meantime Videl had finished her heating exercises, and started exchanging some tentative blows with Trunks, who warded them off with no effort. He found it almost difficult to restrain his strength with her, because whoever had taught her martial arts had done a really good job.   
  
"Let's talk about you instead, Trunks. I never knew your family was so well-acquainted with ChiChi."  
  
"Well, she was the wife of my mother's best friend. And my best friend's mother, too." All of a sudden the painful memories stung him once again. Gohan...  
  
Videl widened her eyes in complete surprise. "You mean...you mean you knew Son Gohan!?"  
  
Trunks looked even more startled than she was. "Gohan! You're asking me if I knew Gohan! You're asking me if I knew the best friend I ever had! You're asking me if i knew my martial arts teacher, the only one who would talk to me about my father, the man who filled me up in hope for a better world and urged me to make it real!"  
  
"Oh" Videl just said. "So you do, you really do know Gohan." Her lips were smiling, but her eyes were flooded with tears. Then she did a thing that Trunks didn't expect, and that left him staring in amazement. She embraced him with an arm around his neck and "Come over here, my friend." And, saying so, she drew Trunks close to herself and kissed him on the cheek. Then she started telling him the story.  
"He was my boyfriend. From the age of sixteen to I don't know, maybe six months before he died. He had become too obsessioned with killing the cyborgs in the end, but...but...we always remained good friends. When ChiChi told me he'd died, I...I..."  
She was no longer holding back tears, that flowed freely on her cheeks and down her neck.  
"Oh, Trunks, I've been waiting for so long to meet someone else who had known him! You don't even know how I miss him!" she yelled.  
  
Trunks embraced her, caressing her arms to make her quiet. He had started crying too, unable to restrain himself, and who cared if the whole world saw him. He had finally found a new friend, and that was worth all the tears in the world. 


	4. In trouble!

WINDSTORMchapter4  
  
  
Acknowledgements: thank you very much to the Mirai Shock Team ( Marron, Juuhachigou and Bulma ) for their beautiful fanfiction, Dragon Ball Super Z, which inspired me to write mine.   
So if you like this story, you know who to thank.  
______________________________________________________________________________  
  
  
  
  
  
Videl and Trunks socialized much more in the following weeks. It was like if discovering to have such a painful thing in common opened up, in both of them, a mysterious source of feelings they didn't know they had. They sparred together, talked a lot, went around doing little choirs for Bulma and Amrita, such as going to town for supplies, or simply wandered around in the fields.   
  
Bulma didn't say anything and watched in silence, but as she saw the two youths become more and more intimate she started giving sign of enjoying the developments of the situation, and sometimes on her life-marked features spread a smile not too often seen even since the end of the hard times.  
  
Despite all this, the two did never mate. Something stopped their relationship from crossing that line that separated a deep and affectionate friendship - plus the shoulder to rely on it meant - from that other thing that brings two people to make their lives one and plan the future only in the perspective of being together.  
Bulma knew well what the reason was. It was called fear, fear to lose the ones you love, and she had no doubt about it for feeling like that herself.  
  
Before her son was born, many years ago, she had met a man.   
He was from a distant planet, but no longer had a home, he was a prince, but had lost his reign and all his subjects, and was doomed to never become king.  
What Bulma felt in the beginning was mere curiosity. She just wanted to know more about the otherwise stand-offish Saiyajin no Ouji, Vegeta, as if inviting him to live in her house gave her the right to pry into his particular life.  
  
He looked so lonely seen from closer. And so melancholic also, even fragile sometimes, never letting down the perpetual scowl carved on his angular features, like if he was trying to drive everyone else away from his real thoughts.  
  
But he couldn't drive away Bulma.   
She went closer and closer, little by little, never frightened by the man's reactions, that could vary from cold indifference to abrupt bursts of rage that would have scared the daylights off of anyone else, and slowly began making her own way to his true self.  
  
She was stubborn and clever, and was perfectly aware that what she was trying to do was comparable to carve a stone with her bare hands. But if he was a stone, then she was a little stream of water, and as time went by, she realized she was actually doing something to him, perhaps she was even drilling a tiny hole in his hard surface, although she could never be sure until...until...well, until it happened.  
  
She felt so ashamed after that, and so happy. She had gradually grew fond of that man, who turned his back at her, but always looked behind with the corner of the eye, who told her she was ugly, but spent hours staring at her concealed in a shadow - like she didn't know he was there.  
So fond she forever stopped thinking about substituting him with anyone else.  
  
He never showed his care or attention, because he was too proud for that, as Bulma had soon sensed, but for a reason she alone seemed to know she was sure he felt some kind of love for her and for their child, who was born less than three years after their first encounter.  
  
She'd caught him more than once standing by the cradle, looking down at his tiny son who was sleeping safe and sound, never saying anything or making a single move to reach out and touch him, face completely expressionless...then as the minutes passed something happened to him, the corner of his mouth bent unnoticeably upwards, and for just a second what was on his face could be called a smile. It was in those moments that Bulma knew he was thinking about the child as of his heir, the future Prince of the Saiyajin, and not as he would once have seen him - a half-breed conceived with a worthless human female. Yes. Unbelievable but true, he was proud.  
  
Bulma let out a heavy sigh.  
"Still thinking about Vegeta" she murmured sadly. "I know I should have stopped a long time ago."   
  
"What's up, Bulma-sama? Sorry, I wasn't listening." Amrita had turned her head away from her work to look at her.  
  
"Iie. Nani mo..." she replied wearily. "Nothing. I was just...thinking. But it's nothing important, believe me."  
  
Amrita looked back at her, a puzzled look on her face. She really seemed to be concerned about what was going on in Bulma's mind, but didn't dare to ask; she understood that something was wrong with her, but couldn't quite imagine what it was. She reflected for a while, thinking about what to decide for, then suddenly her face lit up as she was about to come up with an idea.  
  
"Take this" she said playfully, and the next moment Bulma was brushing her nose against something warm and furry that in addiction meowed deliciously and started purring full engine. Amrita had picked up RoboKoNeko from her desktop, on which the cybernetic cat was used to sleep, and just lifted it towards her mistress' face with a large grin.  
  
"Owwww" Bulma giggled, delighted by the unexpected joke. Amrita always knew how to make someone smile when he was down. "Come to me, kitty-kitty..." she laughed while she cradled it in her arms, forgetting for a moment her memories of grief. RoboKoNeko was as lovable as its creator, she thought, and just as charming; as the days went by it had assumed the appearance of a beautiful, large, long-haired brown tabby cat, with the air of dignity and the natural elegance all real cats have.  
  
"Hey, you've gained some more weight since last week! I'll bet you are at least thirteen pounds! Amrita, you had told me that tiny thingie could actually grow, but I never thought that it would do so fast!!"  
  
"Well, as nanomachines can actually turn food into new tissues a certain growth was natural...but maybe I should have installed a limiting device...it was supposed to be a cat, but it is becoming as plump as a piglet!" she burst, and the two women simultaneously broke into laughter.  
"You know, I wouldn't like to find myself with a puma or something like that...what about bathing it then? Guess what claw marks it could leave!" and the two laughed some more. "Oh, Kami , no, I wouldn't like to get the crap clawed out of me...and we're lucky it still haven't had some genial ideas like going rolling in the wet soil!..."  
  
"C'mon" said Bulma, recovering herself. "Let's get back to work. We have a lot to do today, and Trunks isn't even around to help us."  
  
"Out again with Videl?"  
  
"No. Not today."  
  
  
  
~ * ~  
  
  
  
She was alone, completely alone. Debris and ruins scattered all around her and no one in sight.  
Somewhere near a car lay upside down, the memory of an event happened a very long time ago. A black-haired boy...an old man shooting with a gun...a blonde girl and her evil laugh...then another boy, and then nothing at all.   
  
She sat with her back against a wall, looking wearily at the ruined landscape in front of her. A warm wind blew across the rubble, raising little whirlpools and clouds of dust. This was one of the many places where reconstruction hadn't yet begun, and everything was still like the cyborgs had left it, which meant, a battlefield of devastation.   
It was such a mess, it could take her weeks to find out what she was looking for. But, as usual, she was very determined, and she had all the time in the world. Or so she believed.  
She was absolutely sure that nobody else in the world knew about its existence. And if he did, well, then he would know no more. Nobody would go between her and her goal, the wish of a whole lifetime...if you could call it "life", she intended.  
  
She got up slowly, without forcing her moves. The wind run in her face and across her hair, bringing in her nostrils the smell of earth and cement dust, along with something else that she couldn't recognize. That should perhaps make her suspicious, but it didn't. She was too intensely concentrated on whatever was bothering her now to get acknowledged about the existence of anything else that didn't have to do with it.  
"Maybe I should use the metal detector" she thought.  
No, what a silly idea...the objects were probably made of some material of relatively recent discover, impossible to detect like it was metal. Damn. That was really going to last a long time.   
She'd better start scanning the area straight away, if she wanted to have a chance to ever get that job finished.  
  
Her thoughts often runned to the times before what she called "my little death". Those were good times: she would go to school, flirt and have fun. She acted like all of that was going to last forever and firmly believed that nothing would ever change her world, like most of the girls her age did. She had nothing but clouds in her head. Clever, but not willing enough, a dreamer, but not doing enough to make her dreams come true, she was a normal person, a little bit crazy sometimes, but normal all the same.  
Things had changed a lot since.  
And when she went home, after school was over, she would sometimes meet her father, who because of his work was often away: he was a regular soldier.   
So it was almost no surprise when they were told he had died in battle.   
"Your father is a hero. A real hero" her mother told her, and holding one another, they cried the whole night away.  
  
  
Something twisted the corners of her mouth slightly upwards, giving her a bitter expression that contrasted harshly with her sweet childish features.  
"Father. Mother. Look at what your daughter has become, digging in the garbage for the remainings of an assassin. You wouldn't be proud of me."  
  
~ * ~  
  
Trunks was out on one of his wanderings, alone as usual.  
He would abitually set off like that when he was in a bad mood (which happened rather often), when memories overwhelmed him, or simply whenever he felt uneasy at Capsule Corporation.  
  
Gohan. It was so incredible. Why didn't he tell him he had a girlfriend? And they'd been together for almost five years! It must have been hard for him to hide something like that.  
Maybe he was looking forward to the day he'd defeat the cyborgs to introduce Videl to everyone in times of peace. Or maybe he didn't want anybody to know because he was afraid the cyborgs would try to harm Videl just for the hate they felt towards him...Who knew, now? He was dead, and all of his secrets with him. He was forever gone, like all the others, like his beloved sensei, Piccolo, whose death had caused the Dragon Balls to disappear, making the losses irretrievable.  
But Videl, Videl was still there...lucky girl, he thought with a smile.  
  
There was a problem that troubled Trunks a great deal: some material had disappeared from the laboratory and, when he and Bulma had realized, such a long time had passed it proved almost impossible to estabilish the exact time of the theft, who had committed it, or its purpose, even though Trunks had started forming an idea about it.  
That could happen because the lab was always stuffed up with all kinds of items, part stored in capsules, part piled on shelves, and part simply scattered around where they happened to be, to the point that in certain corners it was impossible to make a move without stepping over something fragile or making it fall from a shelf. The result was that nobody had ever dared to make a list of all the stuff that was there, at least until the day Bulma spent a whole afternoon looking unsuccessfully for a container of cell culture liquid that she was sure she'd left in the refrigerator.  
That made her so mad she decided all of a sudden to turn the whole lab upside down until it came out, and finally a stock was taken.  
The range of stolen objects varied from a common precision balance to various mixtures of dangerous rare chemicals, through cables, computer parts, plugs of every kind and dimension, project papers - including a copy of the precious project for Number Seventeen - and whatsoever.  
Making a complete list was pratically impossible.  
  
Suspecting Amrita would be the most natural thing, but for some reason both him and his mother were prevented from doing so. Amrita could simply ask for any of those things, she would be given, without any problem and free of charge; she was trusted a lot by Bulma, even though her son didn't agree much with this attitude of easily giving her confidence away that was so typical of his mother's.  
Moreover, the theft looked everything but recent: it could have occurred any day between one year and three months before the discover, for what they could guess.  
What made it most incredible was the extreme strictness of the safety measures around the lab. No unauthorized stranger could enter it without being immediately signaled and blocked, Bulma had been overcautious about that.  
Unless it was some kind of superhuman being...which was exactly the thing they were afraid of now.  
  
It was almost impossible not to link the facts with the accident his mother had had and the hyper girl who had caused it. Faster than cars, stronger than any common human , and possibly heading   
towards Capsule Corporation, if she really was going the same direction as his mother, as Bulma reported.  
And there also was a time when she could have committed the theft most easily: while Trunks was running to the hospital to see his mother, so upset for her and in such a hurry that it was possible he had forgotten to turn on the alarms.   
Was it hers the feminine voice with which he had spoken on the phone? Was she deliberately trying to send him away from the house?  
  
Luckily he had told his mother to dismantle the time machine...who knew what a criminal could do with it. It was gone forever now, and never to be reconstructed, for he had carefully made the projects disappear.  
But the real reason why he had done so was another. He wanted to push away from himself the temptation to undertake any other trip in the past.  
The desire was strong, and it hurt so much that sometimes he bitterly regretted going back to the past for the first time to give Goku the miraculous medicine that saved his life.   
When he had gone a second time, to tell everybody there that he had defeated the jinzouningen and Cell, his departure had been almost intolerable.  
How sharp was the contrast between that world, where Gohan and the other warriors-except Goku- were alive and his newborn counterpart would grow up in times of peace, at his father's side, and the world he was going back to! What would he give to stay forever and never return to his future! But, sad as it was to admitt, he was perfectly aware that that wasn't his time. Not only it was the past, but it was also a past he had never belonged to. Someone else was there to take it and it was to that child that it should be given.  
So he forced himself to go, and said goodbye forever to that would-be happyness.  
  
He was so deeply immersed in his thoughts and so apart from reality that when he finally snapped awake he couldn't tell how far or in which direction he'd been walking.  
He was feeling completely lost. That was a rather strange occurrence, because he had an excellent sense of direction, which he thought to have inherited from his father as a Saiyajin instinct, and he could recognize any place he'd been to even after years and even if he'd been there only once.  
But this time his sense of direction didn't help him much. It was like his brain was refusing to collaborate.  
  
"Where the hell am I?" he wondered aloud. No clue could give him an idea of the place he was.  
He took a look around him. The tall, grey, ruined buildings, the puddles of water on the cracked asphalt, a mail box that once had been probably painted red, a broken street-lamp...everything gave an idea of death and neglect. It was a really sad, ugly place.  
And it made him feel uncomfortable, too. He couldn't help a sense of frightened deja-vù, like he suddenly found himself in a landscape from one of his nightmares.  
  
And it was.  
  
Down there, in a puddle larger than the others, a young man lay face-down in the water.But there was no danger for him to smother; he was already dead. A scar running across his left eye and a missing upper limb testimonied a life of fight and stuggle, spent in the vain attempt to protect his city, his family and his best friend, the only one he had left, from the worst murderers that had ever rampaged Earth, cyborgs Juunanagou and Juuhachigou.  
Next to him the boy stood, unable to believe what had just happened.  
"That can't be true" he murmured. "That can't be true..."  
  
He knew that it was just a nightmare, the reappearing of a memory that he had pushed hard down in his deepest self, but that didn't prevent him from feeling the same he did that day. He could try to escape, to run somewhere else, but he knew that wouldn't help at all so he let it happen.  
The child that he once had been tore his way out to the surface,crying desperately, yelling just like then, when he knocked his fists to the ground so hard that they bled and reached Super Saiyajin for the first time.  
  
Gohan. He had let him die. He was unconscious while Gohan was giving his life away for him...  
he was such a coward after all.What was destroying the cyborgs for, when his friend remained dead, when all the people they killed remained dead? Where to find the answers, if there were any?  
Where?  
  
~ * ~  
  
She sniffed him coming like an animal. His smell was in the air, brought by the molecules that the wind carried along blowing towards her. She could detect various combination of chemicals mixed to form different smells: human sweat - of a male, probably, but with some weird note in it - freshly washed cotton clothes and leather boots, plus some less intense odours, like the scent of the soap that was on his skin, or the traces of dust he'd taken along from somewhere else.  
He was dangerously close, but she had been too absorbed in her quest to pay attention to anything else: especially now that she'd just found one of the two things she was looking for.  
  
What if they didn't work, she hadn't thought of yet. They had to. Or she would be forced to risk her life again.   
She didn't fear the woman, whose deep blue eyes told of a character spicy but friendly and kind , nor her assistant with her bizarre clothes, the both of whom she well knew to be ordinary humans with no particular powers. Nor she was afraid of the security measures and the alarms, which she had already once successfully disactivated thanks to her hacking abilities.  
No - the thing she feared most was the damn purple-haired half-breed that used to live there. Saiyajin half-breed, to be sure. And as if it weren't enough, the son of Prince Vegeta himself. Could he be of a worse race? Maybe if he came from Hell, she thought with an angry smirk. It was him the real danger: him, the former enemy of the jinzouningen, their executionist, the avenger of a tortured Earth, the one who had cleaned up the world from its scum, or at least so he believed. And if he could destroy Juunanagou and Juuhachigou, so he could do with her, and she had no doubts he'd do it without regrets, for he had shown he could be very merciless when it came to cyborgs.  
And that was so very much like his smell.  
  
Why, she wondered, why haven't I felt it before? She realized she was in great danger now, more than she would ever like to be. And she was afraid. The situation had suddenly become tense.  
"Damn" she thought. "Damn damn damn damn. Now I know what people felt when they knew the Jinzouningen were coming."   
  
She held her precious discovery tighter in her small hand and crouched down in a corner, hoping not to be found. She hated having a ki so small it was almost impossible to detect, but she had to admitt that it was of undeniable utility in a moment like that.  
  
He was coming closer and closer. It was too late to run and hide now: he could be round every corner and spot her most easily.  
  
"And I also am supposed to have a power radar! Damn, I knew that stupid thing didn't work right. That's what happens when you let down your guard. And if he ki-blasts me into pieces now, I'll have deserved it."  
  
She felt like an idiot. A complete, undeniable idiot that couldn't even watch after herself. And she hated it! Being always in trouble, she meant. Seemed like it was impossible for her to stay out of it : whatever she tried, they kept coming. And this was the biggest one she'd ever been through in her whole life! No, wait. There was another one that was even bigger...and the ironic side of it was that she was trying to do something to fix it right now! Wonderful. To solve a problem, what's better than arising another problem? she scoffed herself.  
  
Maybe he only finds me if I move. So I have to lie all rolled up in this corner completely motionless not daring to breathe...  
  
________________________________________________________________________________  
  
  
  
Woops! Sorry this one took me so long to update! I wanted to get a good job made, so I re-started writing it for three times. But now it's here! The more you review it, the harder I'll try to make it as good as possible. So please take three minutes of your time and...! 


	5. Rabbit in your headlights pt.1

WINDSTORMchapter5  
  
Rabbit in your headlights  
  
  
  
  
  
  
He scares the hell out of me as he comes closer and closer.  
  
He doesn't know I'm here, of course.But I know he's coming and I just can't stand it.  
  
I know who he is: he is Trunks Briefs, the hero of the day. The one who destroyed Juunanagou aand Juuhachigou. Wait, who killed. Destroy is a word I refuse to accept for someone who once was human.  
  
Just like me.  
  
I'll bet you know who I am by now: right, I am a jinzouningen, an artificially modified human. Don't tell me you hadn't understood it: stronger than any other human being, faster than an engine-propelled car, who would i like to fool? Not even your granny would believe me if I tried to pass myself out for the girl next door.  
  
What are you saying, the boy? No, he's stronger than me, but Trunks is not human. Hell, he's got a good half of alien blood in his veins! And he pretends he's more human than me! No,you don't believe him. He's never been one hundred per cent human, and he will never be. I have.  
  
Are you surprised? You shouldn't. All that you know I know it too, and also something more: including the answers for the questions you are asking yourselves right now.  
One fact everybody has well in mind is that Gero got rid of all of his faulty creations up to Number Sixteen: what happened to the other jinzouningen has been a mistery so far.  
Well, I'll tell you now: he dismantled them. That wasn't so hard to guess after all.  
  
Harsh as my words may sound, they are not completely so. For the most part, they were really worthless creatures, poor pitiful beings that never even gained any consciousness of themselves.  
In a word, robots.   
Never call me that: you'd have to regret it.That word is nothing but an insult to me. A robot is just what I described: a brainless heap of dross.  
  
But I was not. I am a human in my brain and in my heart.   
I taste.  
I love.   
I fear.   
I'm alive.  
  
So why did Gero discard me? Easy answer that. First, I have a mind of my own. When I am ordered to do something I see no reason for by a person whom I loathe, I disobey. And of course I did hate Gero. Have you in mind that tiny pretty song by Nine Inch Nails that is called "Head like a hole"? And that goes I'DRATHERDIETHANGIVEYOUCONTROL!!!! Well, that's it.   
Me and him never had a good relationship, mostly because of our mismatching bad tempers. And believe me, it was better that way. For what is about him, I never regretted going away. For other reasons of any kind, just let me get to the point.  
  
As if it weren't enough, I was by no means as strong as he'd hoped me to be. It soon turned out during the tests I carried that I had a lot of problems and weak spots that were no good for what I was expected to do.  
In other words, I would never be able to complete my mission. As if I ever wanted to have anything to do with a man whom I had never seen before, let alone kill him. Hey, Gero had told me how strong he was. I'm not stupid and I love my life. I'd never do it anyway.  
  
Gero never informed me directly that he would dismantle me and recycle the pieces into his next experiments. I understood it on my own. I have told you, I'm not stupid. And did you think that a cyborg like me doesn't cost any money? Hey, where are you living? Everything has a price, and he wanted to be sure to recover mine. Nothing against thrifty attitude in general, mind you. It's just that he had removed most basic organic components from my body, and without the artificial substitutes he implanted in me I would no longer be able to live.  
So I ...hum...took care to discard myself, so to say. Before he could do it.  
He had to resign himself to lose my price.  
  
It is to be said that in the following years I had both the time and the reasons to regret my choice.  
Because after me Gero built four other androids, which is machines resembling a human shape, but completely artificial, all of which eventually turned out to be a complete failure, more than I ever was. And after that he put on the stocks the project for the Perfect Android.  
  
Misfortune wanted that in the project two other human beings remained involved: a brother and his sister, I don't remember their names. Gero noticed them, small criminals living in the streets of the Eastern Capital, and got them kidnapped by one of his androids, I suppose Number Fifteen.  
The Earth would never be the same again.  
  
The siblings soon revealed their nature: vicious and nasty, just like Gero wanted. To complete the Perfect Android he needed strong personalities. But he committed the most serious mistake, for he gave the siblings two bodies endowed with a source of neverending energy, which had took him years to bring to perfection.  
It was like giving a child a toy too poweful for his small hands. The twins became a real danger for Gero and for everybody else, impossible to control and unable to restrain themselves at all. When he finally was able to disactivate them, thanks to no other thing than a stroke of good luck, they had destroyed almost a third of his laboratory.  
  
He believed the controller he implanted in their bodies would make good children out of them, the great man. He also thought the explosive device he added like a nice extra little present would be something of a deterrent for them from disobeying him. A really moving attempt, don't you think so? It was brutally obvious the way it would end. With Gero deprived of his head and the siblings going out for their favourite pastime: total destruction.  
Needless to say there weren't many who appreciated it.  
  
I felt guilty. I couldn't help thinking that if I hadn't ran off like that the world wouldn't be an ugly mess now. Not that I could have prevented Gero from turning the twins into deadly weapons, but maybe I could...I could...who knows, give them something better to do.Blah, even as a cyborg I'm still an idealist. How do I want to deceive myself?  
  
And now they are dead. Damn it, I knew I should find them before it happened. I've always been watching them, I knew they had found a good match in the boy.   
  
And in this very moment he's walking towards me and he hasn't got the slightest clue that in this corner an enemy is hiding. Of course it's him who will think I'm an enemy, so far he's done nothing to me, at least not by purpose.   
Maybe I can try to fool him, to pretend to be what I am not.  
But he will discover me, he will sense I have no ki.  
  
And I would like to tell you more but believe me, in minutes I'll have to face the biggest trouble of my life. 


	6. Rabbit in your headlights pt.2

WINDSTORMchapter6  
Rabbit in your headlights pt.2  
  
I'm a rabbit in your headlights   
scared of the spotlight  
you don't come to visit  
I'm stuck in this bed   
  
Trunks wandered along the once was battlefield that surrounded him. Those walls, that ground, that sky...had seen his triumph over the Jinzouningen, their total vanishing from the world of the living. They were history.   
If he thought it over, he found out that he didn't really love the place so much. The reason why he kept on coming here time after time was another feeling, one whose meaning he couldn't properly grasp, but that maybe could go under the name of peace of mind. Peace of mind, yeah...the one thing he was looking for. A thing that, for a reason or the other, always kept on staying out of his reach. Whenever he thought he could touch it with his fingertips, he felt it slowly slipping away, like in a dream, only the smallest bit left for him to find . Here.  
It didn't make him forget, because one can never forget such things as the ones he'd gone through. But for a moment , just one, he could see Gohan's face smiling at him when he closed his eyes, and hear his voice just as he'd known it, and what he said was: well done, boy.  
That day it had been different from all the other battles he'd ever faced in his life.  
Whenever he'd fought before, he'd always kept in control: a thorough master of his mind, every single reaction down to his heartbeat kept in check and under clear sight, like if he could get some harm from loosening even just a little the connection to his rational self.  
But not that day.  
When he caught sight of the cyborgs he'd let himself go completely. A new strength, never experienced before, seemed to envelop him from the outside and penetrate him in the depths without him summoning it or even just wishing for it: there it was, and there was nothing anybody could do with it, least of all the cyborgs, whom he'd doomed to death a long time ago.  
It flared around his body, coming in waves in and out of him , almost tangible , concretizing in a flickering yellow aura that burned him from head to toe in roaring rage, nourished by all the hatred and pain he'd felt up to that day.  
They were the source for his power, a power he was aware of now more than ever.  
And as he entered the battlefield and faced his enemies for what was going to be the last time, he knew he'd win.  
And oh, what a savage pleasure killing Juunanagou and Juuhachigou, tearing them apart, blasting them into pieces! It was animal, violent, merciless, instinctive, it was Saiyajin blood singing savagely in his veins, it was the true legacy that had been passed down through his father and onto him, it was it was him.  
That day, for the first time, he felt whole.  
For the very first time, the human half of him and the saiyajin half blended together perfectly, mixed in a unique, complete being, instead of fighting harshly and trying to overwhelm each other like they had done before.  
Not split onto two, but an organic, perfectly self-conscious entity. He felt so alive!   
  
  
And now, two of him again. He could never get used to it. The only living being with Saiyajin blood left in the whole universe, and yet so very human in his physical appearance, values, culture, behavior...too attached to his human part to just let it go, too harsh to harmonize with it, he was the weirdest mixture he'd ever heard of.  
He felt doomed to forever live within this contradiction.  
Thin rubber gloves  
She laughs when she's crying  
She cries when she's laughing  
His skin was stinging with static, making him nervous. He wondered around a bit, stepping in and out the wrecked houses, like he was trying to find a source for his uneasiness, but in vain. He cast glances here and there into the abandoned rooms, wondering how life could have been when there were still happy people living there. Well, maybe not all of them were happy, but at least they were anything at all.  
Now, instead, not a living soul left. Not even one...he tried to feel for any ki around, but obviously he found no one.  
That's when he had the unlucky idea to turn the next corner and look down at his feet, and so he saw her.  
She shot out smack in front of him, lacerating the calm of the air, her shape barely more than colors blurring: a lightening.  
Trunks was shaken violently, his heart missing a bit. He couldn't mistake what he saw in the instant before she disappeared. She had big, almond-shaped yellow eyes, too tilted in her childish face, a messed-up mop of short dark ruffled hair, and she was small and bony. She wore the same round golden earrings as Juunanagou and Juuhachogou did, twinkling in the sunlight.   
He needed to look no longer: she could as well have had "Red Ribbon" printed all over herself. She was the hyper girl, the one who had hurt his mother, a jinzouningen like the ones he has loathed all those years. But yet he wanted to see it: the red ribbon-shaped mark tattooed on the back of her left shoulder, the taint that was enought to make him consider the idea of killing in cold blood any being who was so miserable to bear ir.  
And for that reason alone he couldn't let her go like that.  
  
She heard him hissing through the air like a bullet behind her back and cursed herself for being so unable not to lose her nerve like she did. Though she had a considerable speed on her side, she was perfectly aware that that could have been not enough to escape him. And gosh, he must have seen me quite well, she thought, he's probably pursuing me to tell me a thing or two about artificial humans and then...who knows what is gonna happen then? He will probably try to get rid of me before I can harm anyone. And hell, he's not completely wrong on that point. If he only knew what I am looking for...huh, he'd probably kill me much faster then. Shit! Why do I always have to get myself like this?  
  
Wind, heat, breathing isn't enough to supply your lungs with all the oxygen they need, run, don't stop: if you do you'll be dead.  
Don't ask yourself anything, this is not the time to ask, you don't even know why you do it, so just do it and shut up.  
You're a swallow, you're an arrow, you're a bullet to the sky, or maybe you're just a frightened rabbit running for your life, no matter what you are, just run!  
Close your eyes when they hurt with the wind and sand, you don't need to see to put your feet one after another and go on, force the life through your nostrils, you need it. You need your life.  
  
  
My blood is thickening in my veins, I wonder why I am so crazy, when i perfectly know that I cannot reach her this way.  
It could go on for days and days like this and I don't care. She's beyond human, for a moment I fed a hope so absurd: I hoped that she was like me. I never told my mother, but what makes me different from anyone else I know - my hybrid nature - has often been a burden for me. Like when I found myself the only one capable of changing the past, fighting the cyborgs, changing this world to a better place.  
I've found myself alone instead. I know what she is, but my mind refuses to admitt it. She won't stop. She won't tire. She should be dead. She's a cyborg.   
And she hurt my mother. She made her have that accident. Momma could have been killed. This is the thing that enrages me most. I wanna see her in that face and ask her why she'd do it, what she was looking for that day. I wanna ask her why she came into our house and stole all those things. Because I'm sure it's been her now.  
What does she want to do with them? What is she planning? I'm sure it's nothing good.   
  
The chase lasted long, neither of the two seeming willingly to surrender and let go. They ran through the streets of the wrecked town, an abandoned car still showing here and there, and then out of the asphalt and into the country, where the once cultivated fields were now a jungle of weeds. They ran through a small woods, making the birds fly away precipitously at their passage, and once again in the open, far away from the remains of the human dwellings, madding like they were happy, wild and free in the summer sun. Its rays were burning hot through crystal-clear air, and everything was bright. If the world had had to start over that very day, the weather couldn't have been more perfect.  
A thought reached Trunks in a moment, the thought of how stupid he'd been not to fly. She was faster than him on foot, but what about in the air? Maybe she didn't even know how to levitate, it was a good chance.  
The next moment he was airborne and there, at an inch or little more from his fingers, there was her small shoulder. Just one more effort, just a move...Yay!  
When he finally set his hands on her they were crossing a dry field, all covered up in yellow withered grass. They both fell to the ground and rolled along in the dust, raising whirlpools and clouds of it and covering themselves in blades of dry grass and earth, Trunks struggling to block the girl and the girl struggling hard to break free. Geez, she was strong. She kicked, she scratched, she bit, always roaring in rage; and to fight she used every part of her body: the harder she could hit him with it, the better. Like if that wasn't enough, she was astonishingly agile. Her body wasn't made of the same matter as all the others; Trunks swore he saw once or twice her limbs and spine bending in a position he'd never have thought of. It was something like fighting with a rabid wildcat, twisting and hissing, and even the claw-marks that it cost him were much the same.  
Finally he was able to push her belly-down in the grass, the girl still twisting in his grip and seeking desperately for a way to escape. "Let me go" she hissed under her breath.  
Trunks was surprised that the girl could even speak a human language at all. Juunanagou and Juuhachigou did talk, that was true, but they didn't seem to intend language like common people did. What they said alone counted. Whenever someone implored mercy from them, they pretended they didn't understand, or maybe really didn't. Being made of steel in the body had maybe hardened as well their hearts.  
So she spoke. But he didn't care about that now. He wanted to see the mark. Show him the mark, and her life was over. He searched with feverish eyes her left shoulder, but it was covered by her clothes, and just when he was about to take her simple tank top by the corner and slide it down, she arched her hips hard under him and was able to spin around to face him. But she couldn't free herself like she was trying to do, because before she could do it he pinned her firmly to the ground once more, his hands on her shoulders.  
He locked his eyes in hers, his hard, blue gaze meeting frightened yellow eyes.  
Frightened?  
No, he thought to himself. He knew jinzouningen by now, they didn't feel things like people made of meat did. They were never sleepy, tired, or hungry. They didn't know pain and obviously they felt no fear.  
He hated her with the depths of his very being just for being like that, artificial; he needed no other reason.   
He'd put his hands to her throat and break her windpipe, yes, that's what he would do. In his delirious thoughts he was getting lost, no longer realizing where he really was and what his former purpose had been. His saiyajin part was fighting to break free.  
But somehow he was able to regain control of his rational mind, and he realized what it was that restrained him from doing so. Like she had guessed his intentions and knew she couldn't do anything to escape his grip, the girl wasn't making resistance any longer, limp and motionless like a rag doll. He was afraid of his savage part now, he felt like killing a child. What made it worst was that she really looked like it.  
An unexpected thought struck his mind while he was looking down at her: how long had she been like that? He remember how Juuhachigou's face, which he kept constantly on looking at, never seemed to change throughout the years. And he remembered how he sometimes felt strangely attracted by her physical appearance, and how it made him hate her all the more, because he couldn't conceive how such a pretty girl could have a core like hers of ice and frozen metal.  
Now, the face of the girl under him was the one of a frightened child. She looked almost sweet. But he thought even more that he should not be misled by her appearance. How could she be any different from her colleagues after all? He hesitated, not really knowing what to do. And it was this hesitation that got him lost.  
His grip loosened for a moment and without losing time she took advantage of that, freeing one of her arms and slapping him hard in the face. The move surprised Trunks so much-he'd expected a punch, a karate move to his throat, or anything like that-that he completely lost any control on the girl's twisting body, that finally was able to get completely rid of his hold and regain freedom.  
She immediately got up to her feet, and , after casting an angry glance at him, she turned her back to him and disappeared, as fast as she could.  
Song lyrics by Unkle, "Rabbit in your headlights" 


End file.
